Love Quote by Angela Carter

Carter’s self-portrait turns on a sly contradiction: she claims she “hasn’t changed much,” then quietly lists two changes that matter most to a writer and to a person. The first is stylistic discipline. “I use less adjectives” isn’t just a craft note; it’s a small repudiation of literary perfume, the kind of ornamental description that can flatter the sentence while softening the blow. Carter built her reputation on baroque intelligence and sensuous excess, so the admission reads like an earned austerity rather than a retreat. It suggests an artist who has learned that the sharpest effects come from precision, not decoration - that myth, sex, violence, and power don’t need to be upholstered.

Then comes the turn: “and have a kinder heart, perhaps.” That “perhaps” is classic Carter: a hedge that keeps sentiment from getting smug. Kindness is presented as a possibility, not a badge. Subtextually, she’s refusing the conversion narrative where age automatically delivers moral superiority. Instead, she offers a writer’s version of maturation: fewer modifiers, more mercy. The pairing matters. Reducing adjectives implies stripping away habitual judgments - the lazy labels and knee-jerk intensifiers that turn people into types. A “kinder heart” follows naturally when language stops doing gratuitous work.

Contextually, Carter’s fiction is famous for its ruthlessness toward patriarchal myths and its sympathy for the bodies caught inside them. This line reads like a late-career calibration: keep the scalpel, lose the flourish; keep the critique, add tenderness. It’s not a softening of her politics so much as a refinement of her aim.